


Indulgencias

by write_light



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Budding Love, Friendship/Love, Gentle Derek, M/M, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek doesn't indulge himself, he thinks – apart from his new-found ability, that is. But there are risks to being so unaware, warnings that he and Stiles both have indulged themselves for long enough. Their refuge in Mexico is a refuge no more, and evil is waiting for them in Beacon Hills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indulgencias

**Author's Note:**

> A companion Sterek piece to my ficlet " _[Refugio](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1595723)_ ", but set a season later after the events of S4.  Reading that fic first is recommended but not required (and it's short!) :D
> 
> Warnings: Spoilers for 4.11 and 4.12

  


The purple sky was edging toward blue and the clouds flamed pink overhead. The high canyon walls hid the sunrise, but it was close. The grass waved around him, and the wind, in his hair, in his face, was cool and scented by the river. The dry flinty dust of the desert beyond the canyon walls was blocked out now.  
  
He ran faster along the grassy shore then cut toward the river and leapt, far out into the cool river, where he plunged into the underwater silence. No birds, no rush of wind in the trees, no voices in his head - not his ever-present guilt, not Talia, not even Stiles.  
  
Derek paddled to shore, shook the water from his coat as his paws sank into the reddish beach sand, and dashed along the riverbank again, deeper into the canyon. He was playing, for the first time in many years and swimming for the first time ever as a wolf. He was happy and safe, and Stiles was safe, waiting for him at the woman's small house in the trees.  
  
They'd been in the river nearly every day, avoiding the occasional tourist or ranger and he'd stood naked before Stiles, as man and as wolf, and what he saw in Stiles' eyes was something he didn't dare tell himself was love or anything like that. But it felt like that.  
  
***  
  
Stiles slept better after his phone died, after he stopped complaining about the lack of service and the data plan he'd forgotten to buy before they crossed over into Mexico. He slept later each day, and deeper in the intense dark of the night after the woman blew out the last of the candles. He slept despite the ringing of insects and birds in the trees that stood guard around her small home, and the rush of the small waterfall not far away. He dreamed, and in his dream, he could smell something so wonderful.  
  
And then he woke.  
  
"Coffee!"  
  
And mingled with the scent of coffee, something else, something delicious was baking. On the table in her main room sat a brimming cup of black coffee and a plate of pan dulce. There was something new this morning – fruit, intensely fragrant, but Stiles was still in his t-shirt and pajama bottoms; the woman looked at him but held her tongue.  
  
She had a name, one that he tried to pronounce, but gave up on after three tries and her increasing laughter mixing with Derek's half-smile. He settled on calling her "Abuelita" even though she was not so old because that was what she said he should call he and because he was so very young, in her words.  
  
She motioned to the chair closest to the coffee, and waited for Stiles' sleepy brain to register and respond. It was solid, chunky wood, but the joints were loose, and it was hard, but he hardly noticed because her eyes were on him again.  
  
"He told me you fought off a pack of alphas by going to the land of the dead."  
  
Stiles choked on the pan dulce.  
  
"I- that was Scott."  
  
"He told me you fought off a fox spirit, a dark one that lived inside you."  
  
"No, it-" Stiles was unused to discussing the supernatural, and his encounters with it, so directly. "It was my friends. They saved me."  
  
"He brought you here, to find some refuge. I saw for myself what the dark one had done to you."  
  
She hadn't taken her eyes off him. Stiles wanted to drink the coffee, but restrained himself. He could tell this wasn't over. She was quiet for a few moments, and he dared to take a sip, watching her over the top of the cup.  
  
"Now he tells me you fought off a crazy banshee, a were-jaguar , and his crazy uncle, all at once," and finally there was something close to skepticism in her voice.  
  
Stiles choked on his coffee, burning his tongue and spilling some on her tablecloth. He was in the middle of apologizing when she grabbed him by the chin and looked into his eyes. Her eyes were blackest brown and unblinking.  
  
"He never lies, you know."  
  
Stiles had no response.  
  
"So I will not lie to you either. You must understand that you two are not finished, that you are going to draw evil to you like spirits come to a candle flame. You must keep fighting and you must keep him by your side and stand by his as well."  
  
"I'm, I, uh- " Stiles stammered as she held his jaw firmly, her face inches away.  
  
"You sleep and eat, he runs all night in his new wolf-skin, but _your time of indulgences is up_. The evil is already there in your town, met but not recognized. It is looking for you still and you need to face it."  
  
"And do- do what?" Stiles asked.  
  
"What you always do. But I think you knew this. Why else would you be up with the sunrise? Finish your coffee and take the truck into the canyon. Find him, bring him back. I will make plans."  
  
The woman shuffled off into the kitchen and returned entirely too soon for Stiles' comfort, but she was only carrying more pan dulce, the same he'd smelled from the bedroom.  
  
"This is for him. You go get him."  
  
Stiles gulped his coffee.  
  
***  
  
Stiles left the truck by the trailhead at the farthest end of the park, a place called Refugio. The river was wide and shallow here, with sandy banks. He could see the wolf tracks, but no sign of Derek.  
  
And then he heard Derek softly clearing his throat behind him, and whirled, furious and relieved and excited that he was alone with Derek, free with Derek, _here_ with Derek.  
  
"And you're _naked_. Too early in the morning for that, Der. Six foot dripping wet hunk of man like you. I'm only human."  
  
Derek closed the distance in a few strides and kissed Stiles hard, then soft and Stiles could only moan. They'd gone only a bit further with this new thing on the drive down here, and even out here under the starlit skies, but they both kept to an unspoken boundary at the woman's house. They didn't discuss it – no "What is this?" or "Why?" or "How long have you-?" Not a word about "What next?"  
  
When Derek finally relaxed, and Stiles let go of him, it was minutes later, the sky was brighter, and Stiles had to say it. Derek could hear the frustration in his voice.  
  
"She told me to get you, and then to go. She said we have to go."  
  
"She knows something. She has her reasons."  
  
"What does she know? Who is she Derek? She said there was evil in Beacon Hills. How does she know that? And why is she letting a shape-shifter and his scrawny boyf- and his friend crash at her house?"  
  
Derek smiled that infuriating half-smile again.  
  
"She knew my mother. I found her by accident when I came here after my family- after the fire. She knows werewolves. She knows a lot of things."  
  
"Is she-?"  
  
"No, she's something else. A shaman, the local version of an emissary, maybe. Or something else. I've never quite figured her out."  
  
"And yet you trust her?"  
  
"I brought you here," Derek said, his expression unchanging. His eyes scanned Stiles' face over and over, waiting for something.  
  
A long silence followed as Stiles stared him right back, and then finally dropped his head and nestled against Derek's chest.  
  
"Do it again," Stiles asked after a few deep breaths, when he could hear Derek's steady heartbeat.  
  
"I'm not a stuffed toy."  
  
"One more time," Stiles pleaded, trying very hard not to sound like he was.  
  
Derek sighed, a short, quick huff that said he was happily under duress.  
  
Stiles felt the fur under his cheek, the fluid shift of man into animal, and the heavy paws on his shoulders, breath warm against his ear. Derek shifted back almost immediately.  
  
"You're getting better at that," Stiles said and wondered why Derek blushed at the compliment.  
  
Derek was watching a pair of hikers far off in the distance.  
  
"I brought you a change of clothes," Stiles said hastily, pulling some from his backpack and blocking Derek from view while he dressed.  
  
"Never has a skinny kid been a better screen," Derek muttered.  
  
"I like you better down here – you have a sense of humor," Stiles responded.  
  
"I've always had it – you're just starting to get it."  
  
***  
  
Back at the small house in the trees, Derek devoured the pan dulce and the fruit as well as a plate of ham that had appeared in the meantime, while the woman spoke to Derek in rapid, accented Spanish. She directed none of her words to Stiles, and in evident frustration, he sighed. Derek shoved several slices of ham over to him and gestured with his brows to eat up, and fast. Stiles wondered how one man could say "and fast" so clearly with just two bushy dark lines.  
  
"Never look at his eyes, _ninguna de ellos_ ," she said finally, and Stiles' 11th grade Spanish failed him, he thought.  
  
"Any of them?" he asked Derek, under his breath.  
  
"He has three," Derek said casually, still listening to the woman.  
  
It shut Stiles up, briefly, although his mouth remained open. He wanted to say "Who?" but the woman was looking at him now.  
  
"Will you help Derek Hale?"  
  
"Um, yes? Yes!" Stiles said, feeling he should stand up and proclaim it.  
  
"This one has the spark, but he lacks so much more," she said to Derek, and Stlles' shoulders slumped a little.  
  
"He'll succeed. So will the Alpha, and the others."  
  
"They started the _faro_ again, they awakened the Nemeton, why do you trust them?"  
  
"Because they did all those things and overcame them."  
  
"Then I pray you overcome this next task or the rest will be in vain."  
  
"She's a real downer. Makes you sound like a Disney prince," Stiles whispered.  
  
"This one, I bet he talks endlessly."  
  
Derek dropped his head, but it was to hide a smile. Stiles was already talking over her.  
  
"I do not-"  
  
Derek silenced him with a look of such immeasurable love and adoration that Stiles finally shoved a piece of ham in his mouth.  
  
The woman pressed a scrap of paper into Derek's hand and said only "Go." She kissed his temple and took his chin as she'd taken Stiles'. What she said next was so soft only Derek heard it. Stiles could see his eyes, fearful, his brows raised high, and then those damned green eyes flicked to him, then back to her, like a lighthouse beam there and then gone, and Stiles was adrift in the fog again.  
  
***  
  
The car was quiet when Stiles slept, noisy with talk when he awoke, and through it all, Derek drove east into Nuevo Leon, watching the tall peaks dwindle into the distance behind them, replaced by low buttes and wide open expanses that unnerved him. They stopped once, at a Pemex in Saltillo, and Stiles devoured more soda and snacks than Derek thought possible.  
  
They arrived hours later at the address, a graffiti-marked pale pink building fronted by a wall of metalwork, at the unlikely corner of Indulgence and Illumination. They were deep in a tangled development nearly two hundred miles east of the river they'd stood by that morning, near a languid, overgrown arroyo that gave its stagnant odor to the neighborhood.  
  
Stiles stood beside Derek, nervous in the warren of looping, comically named streets. Protection and Pardon lay on the other side of the main avenue, out of reach for now. Derek knocked on the door, and it swung open on a narrow hallway and a small girl playing with two dolls. She looked like a young version of the woman who'd sheltered them. She stared up at Derek unafraid. Stiles recognized the look of surprise on Derek's face, the disappointment of not being terrifying.  
  
"I like her," he whispered to Derek.  
  
"Papa," the girl said and ran toward a dimly light room in the back.  
  
A white-haired man came slowly around the corner, using his cane and the wall for support, the little girl close behind him, her dolls hugged tight to her. The man rested briefly about halfway down the hall, and the girl slipped cautiously around him so as not to topple him over.  
  
"Sit with me in my kitchen, Mr. Hale," he said from where he stood, far from the door.  
  
"Come play with me," the girl said, grabbing Stiles' hand and tugging him out onto the street.  
  
Stiles looked to Derek, but he was already inside the house and Stiles was being pulled in the opposite direction.  
  
"Do not indulge her too much!" yelled the old man, with surprising force.  
  
"Where are we going?" Stiles asked.  
  
"To play," the little girl replied.  
  
"And what's your name?"  
  
"Papa says not to tell people that."  
  
"Yeah, no, I get that. Very smart."  
  
"He's not my papa. Not really."  
  
"Should you be telling me that?" Stiles asked.  
  
The little girl stopped in her tracks and thought. Stiles could see her expression changing with each alternative she considered.  
  
"Yes," she said emphatically and resumed tugging him around the block.  
  
It was a bleak area, utterly devoid of children, or life. The streets were narrow and unfinished or unrepaired in many places. Occasional weeds had claimed the rank of shrubbery, while the homes seemed to cower back from each other.  
  
"Are we playing now?" Stiles asked, dodging a puddle. Low thunder rolled behind him.  
  
"For a while. Your werewolf friend is too serious."  
  
"Oh, he's- yeah. Everything is more serious around him. Wait, you know what he is?"  
  
"Yes," she said. "Papa tells me about all the things."  
  
***  
  
The old man invited Derek to sit on a metal chair that was losing its last bit of cushion.  
  
"Your family guarded your city, protected the whole region, at one time," he said, gesturing a wide circle with his free hand. "But they've fallen so far – why is that?" the man asked, even as he was pouring coffee for Derek. "I tell you why - you indulged yourself, we heard, with that hunter."  
  
"I didn't know," Derek blurted, unprepared for this accusation, for the thought that his failure was an international concern.  
  
"No of course you didn't, but that's not the point. You have a task. And now you have other things that are leading you from it. Your transformation, your new – in my day we didn't say men had boyfriends – these distract."  
  
Derek's eyes were on the old man's face, and his heart was pounding.  
  
"I don't know who you think you are-"  
  
"That's not the point either. Calm your heart. You chose well this time." The man set the coffee down, and settled into the other chair. "I lost her parents to an evil that you now hold locked away in your city, without even knowing.  
  
***  
  
The ride back was the worst part of the trip. Derek spoke of past sins and things that they could no longer avoid; Stiles asked him questions when he got lost in the stories, and asked about his mother, and about the Hales.  
  
Stiles tried to make Derek believe it would be okay, they would work it out and save Beacon Hills one more time. He tried to make himself believe.  
  
"What did the woman say about me, before we left?"  
  
Derek looked at him with the same fear, so rare in his eyes.

"That I need you."  
  
"Well we knew that, right?" Stiles laughed, forcing the mood to lighten.  
  
"And that you won't know me when I need you most."  
  
"I will," Stiles insisted.  
  
Derek drove through the desert dusk with his hand on Stiles' hand and said nothing.  


**Author's Note:**

> The canyonlands and the oddly named neighborhood are both based on real places - Parque Estatal Cañón de Fernández in Durango, and a portion of a Monterrey suburb. This fic and "Refugio" are part of my headcanon that the Hales have close ties to Mexico going back a while, that Derek spent time there as a kid and after his family's death, that he's fluent in Spanish, and that he's taken Stiles there at least a few times outside of what we see in the show. More to come in this AU, I think.


End file.
